Coaching the Client's Self Rather Than Their Parts with Richard Schwartz | Heal The Divide Podinar

Well, thank you. Awesome. I feel very welcome. You're a lovely host. I love how you've created this tight community, you and Sarah. I'm excited to be on and honored. It sounds like you know IFS pretty well. I'm happy to introduce it in the 15 minutes you mentioned. Should I jump in?

Okay. So as Alison read, my background is as a family therapist, so I was steeped in systems thinking. I was actually one of those obnoxious family therapists that thought we'd found the holy grail and that people who were mucking around in the intrapsychic world were wasting their time because we could change all that by just changing some external relationships. I held that belief until I tested it, made the mistake of doing an outcome study, and found that I could reorganize the families just the way the books said to do it, and still these bulimic clients we were doing this with kept binging and purging. So out of frustration I began asking why, and they started talking this language of parts, which was foreign to me at the time because I thought I just have one mind and a bunch of different thoughts and emotions. But they were talking about these parts as if they had a lot of autonomy and could make them do things they didn't want to do and would get into fights with each other. At first I got scared and thought maybe these kids are sicker than I thought, until I really listed inside myself and thought, oh my god, I've got them too, and mine are very similar in some ways. Then I got intrigued and began to quiz my clients about their inner systems. I was lucky to have a few incredibly articulate about it, and they taught this to me. I basically learned this model from my clients.

What I learned, and I'm going to skip through a bunch of the mistakes and the phases, but mainly what I learned is that number one, we all have these parts. It's the natural state of the mind to have parts, to be subdivided this way. I liked your initial picture because it looks like a bunch of cogs in a machine, which the word part does kind of conjure, but it's inadequate because what I found with the parts is that they are full-range personalities. People who have the diagnosis of multiple personality disorder, now called DID, aren't so different from the rest of us except that their system got blown apart such that they have these amnesic barriers between these different parts. But the idea that they're full-range personalities is pretty much the same, and that is a different paradigm from the way most of us have thought about ourselves. But it turns out to be a very empowering paradigm because all of them have wonderful qualities and resources to lend to us and to help us thrive in our lives. Trauma and attachment injuries, bad parenting, forces them out of their naturally valuable states into roles that can be extreme, and they are also frozen in time during the trauma. So they still think you, Allison, are five years old and they have to protect you in the way that they did back then. In that state they can actually be quite damaging in our lives. A lot of the work is just helping clients focus on them, and instead of the usual fighting with them or trying to get rid of them or allowing them to take over and do something destructive, just get curious and begin to ask them questions. To most everybody's amazement, the answers start coming, and you'll learn about the secret history of how whatever part it is got forced into the role it's in and doesn't like that role but thinks it's absolutely necessary because something tragic would happen if it didn't keep doing this.

So that's what I learned from these clients, and I also learned that they tend to organize across clients in similar ways. As a systems guy, I began trying to figure out what are the distinctions and the patterns here. The main distinction that leaped out immediately was between parts that you might call your inner children. Before they get hurt, they are playful and creative and loving and open and vulnerable and sensitive. Because they are so sensitive, they're the ones who get hurt the most by the betrayals or the swings and arrows. They take in what I'm going to call burdens, which are extreme beliefs and emotions that entered your system from those experiences. These extreme beliefs and emotions attach to these parts almost like a virus. After one of these inner children gets burdened that way, their whole organization is around that extreme belief or emotion. They operate with that, and then they have the power to make us feel, even years later, that same emotion and can overwhelm us if they feel the need to, making it so we can't function. Most of us, after being traumatized or having a bad experience, will try to lock those parts away inside, in inner basements or abysses or cysts, and desperately avoid anything that might trigger them. So we call those parts the exiles, because inside they are exiles. You moved on from them, thinking all you were doing was moving on from the memories, sensations, emotions, and beliefs of the trauma, not realizing in the process you were locking away your most precious qualities a lot of the time. Then you become dominated by another set of parts who are desperately trying to keep these exiles from being hurt or triggered and also keep them contained. We call those parts protectors. I'm just talking about the roles they're forced into, not the essence of who these parts are. Some protectors are trying to manage your life so that nothing happens that might trigger your exile. They might manage your relationships so no one gets close enough to hurt you, manage your appearance so you never get rejected, manage your performance so you get a lot of accolades to counter the worthlessness. They're working constantly. They're the ones that got you your good jobs, got you through graduate school. They're in your head a lot of the time, keeping you from feeling too much by keeping you in your head. So we call these managers. Some of them, particularly in women and people in my profession, make you take care of everybody else and not take care of yourself. They're just trying to keep you safe and keep these exiles from being triggered. Despite their best intentions, the world has a way of triggering your exiles anyway, which is a big crisis or emergency. So another set of parts immediately goes into action to get you higher than those flames of raw emotion from the exiles, or to douse them with some substance, or to distract you until they burn themselves out. So we call those protectors firefighters. It's a very simple map. It's really just three classes of parts: exiles, and then two kinds of protectors, managers and firefighters. Again, these are the extreme roles the parts are forced into, not who they become when they leave these roles, because they can. When they do leave the roles, they'll transform into their naturally valuable states. So that's a lot of what IFS is about: helping people not just notice and observe in a mindful way and be accepting of these parts, but actively starting to help them transform.

I stumbled onto another big discovery through trial and error. As a family therapist, I was trying to have my clients have better dialogues with these parts once I got hip to the fact that they're not what they seem and they deserve to be listened to. I was trying to get my clients to listen to them and be curious about them. As I was doing that, I would find that a client would suddenly become furious with the part. For example, if I was trying to have Allison talk to her critic, she might start out okay but suddenly she's angry at the critic, the critic gets defensive, and they're fighting. As a family therapist, in family sessions when you try to have two people talk to each other and one of them gets extreme, sometimes they're being cued from somebody else, a third party that disagrees with the other person or is siding against them. We were taught to get that third party to step back in the room, out of the person's line of vision, and when that happens they would calm down and have a decent conversation. I started thinking maybe the same thing is happening in this inner world. As I'm trying to have my client talk to the critic, maybe some part that hates the critic has come in. So I would ask clients to get those parts to step out, and as they did, they suddenly would become a different person. That person would know how to relate to the critic or any other part from a place of compassion, curiosity, calm, and confidence. The part would respond and soften and start to tell its story and how it was forced into the role it was in, and also about the other parts in the system that it was protecting. As we got that information, we could negotiate permission to go to the exile it was protecting. Then I learned over time about a five-step process for literally healing the exile, which then freed up that protector to no longer have to do that job. So that's a very nutshell version of both the theory and the practice. But I do want to save time to do a demonstration of some of that with Allison. Sound okay?

That's a really important question because the way you think about how they come has a lot to do with how you relate to them. There is a myth in the trauma world that they are created by trauma, that the unitary mind gets fragmented into these many minds. That means the existence of parts is pathologized. I'm a crusader against that belief. What I not only believe but have found over and over is that we come into the world with them, either dormant or manifest. Infant researchers like Barry Brazelton talk about five discrete states that infants rotate through, so those are the ones online when you're born. As you develop, others come in on time, and they're there to help us in our life. So they're not pathologized. They're valuable. Like kids in a dysfunctional family, they are forced into roles they're not designed for and hate. They become like what we call in family therapy parentified inner children. They're forced to take on responsibility they're not equipped to handle, and others get exiled. That's an important question.

Yeah, we've done that kind of retrieval where we've had to go back into the womb and get some parts out of there.

Okay. Did you have something in mind to work on, Allison?

Okay, that sounds good. Let's go ahead and focus on that feeling of wanting to get out of there and being pulled. Notice where you find it right now in your body. I can see you're feeling it right now.

Good. As you notice it there, how do you feel toward it?

So don't look at me, it's saying? No, don't look at that other part. Okay, got it. So we might want to start with that one that doesn't want you to look. Where do you find it in your body?

How do you feel toward that part?

Is it giving you that intention? Ask it what it's trying to protect you from or why it doesn't want you to look.

Any particular feeling it's worried about?

Does that make sense to you, Allison? It feels very familiar. Ask this one how old it thinks you are. Don't think of the answer, just wait and see what comes.

How are you feeling toward it as you get that?

Let it know. It sounds like it's been trying to keep you away from this for a long time.

Do you feel like you need its protection? Is this something you're really afraid to look at or feel?

Let it know that. Let it know maybe you're older than when it got this job. See how it reacts.

How would it feel now if we went with the hook?

Return your focus to that hook. How would it feel now to go where it wants you to go? Let it know you're ready, and I'll be right with you. Let's just see where it takes you.

How do you feel toward her as you see her there?

Let her know that. Do you have a sense of how close you are to her or distant?

How is she reacting to your compassion?

Right now we're not going to do anything but try to earn some trust with her in whatever way feels right. Just see how you want to do that.

She's looking up. She's ready to talk. Let's see what she wants you to know. By the way, you don't have to share with us what she tells you if you don't want to. It's up to you.

Are you open to knowing why she carries that fear? Tell her you're ready to know where she got this fear in the past. Don't think of the answer, just wait and see what comes.

Is all that making sense to you? Let her know you're getting that there were lots of different scenes and incidents where she got the message that she better not be seen because she'll be judged as not good enough.

Let her know you get that the fear is that deep and big. Ask a little more about why it felt so much like she might be annihilated.

We'll respect that. Some part isn't ready for you to know that piece, and given the time we have, we'll respect that. Focus on the block for one second and ask it what it's afraid would happen if you saw the rest of it.

There's some other feeling it's afraid to let you feel. What's it afraid would happen if you felt that?

Ask it how old it thinks you are.

We're going to respect its pace. But like you did with the other one, let it know who you are, because it may not know, and that you can handle more than it thinks, if that's true.

This probably isn't the place to take the next step given the time constraints. But let the girl know that you get there's more she needs to share with you, and you're going to find a time to go with her there. See how that is for her.

In the meantime, go into that time period and be with her in the way she needed somebody. Tell me when you're in there with her.

How are you being with her?

How's she reacting?

If she'd like, we could take her out of that time period to a safe place until you're ready to go back with her and see what else happened. Or she can just stay there. It's her call.

It could be right there in your house with you, or a fantasy place of her choice.

Let's take her there.

Good. You're there with her. Tell her she doesn't have to go back there until she's ready to show you the rest, and you're going to take care of her this way until then and after.

Let's bring in these protectors and have them see how she's doing now. See if they want to say anything or have any reaction.

Embarrassed by what you shared, or what are they embarrassed about?

That's something for them to think about. Ask them if they could really trust they didn't need to do this protection, what might they like to do inside of you instead?

Yeah, they can think about it. You haven't fully healed this little girl yet, so it's likely they won't totally drop their weapons until that's complete. Let them know you get that.

Thank your parts for doing this, especially in this context. Remember you're coming back to a group that you're leading. How do you feel?

Good, good. I can see in the chat a lot of accolades. I hope you get to read them.

That's something we've struggled with. We want to start training coaches in this, and we're in the process of designing a curriculum. Some of where we've landed is that for coaches, it's safe to work with protectors of clients and maybe not go to these inner children, the piece of work that Allison and I just did, without at least consultation from a therapist or some kind of collaboration. While there are lots of people like Allison who you could do what I just did and it would probably be fine, there are also a percentage of people who have pretty severe trauma, and it's good to have some therapeutic training to work with that population. You don't know in advance who is who, so we're going to err on the safe side and encourage coaches to stay with protectors. There's a whole lot you can do just at that level.

That's exactly right. That simple question. Sometimes you have to be a little more directive and say, focus on that part, find it in your body, and direct the question right there. What does it want you to know? Often you'll get more clarity that way.

The other question I think is safe for you to add is what I used: ask this part how old it thinks you are, and if it thinks you're young, just update it and see how it reacts. As you can see, that had an impact. There's also a general question for protectors: ask this part what it needs from you going forward. That's a good question.

It's beautiful. Thank you so much for that story. I think that is where we're going to land that. As you work with protectors as a coach, you're going to learn about exiles because they're going to tell you they're protecting these other parts. Rather than ignoring them until you get to an IFS therapist, I think it's safe to do what Henry did: let them know you see them, you're not going to forget about them, and you welcome them. That much can be very powerful as a placeholder until you get to a point where you are with somebody who can take you the other steps.

I learned the dangers the hard way when I was starting out. These clients who were teaching it to me would talk about their exiles, and I would think that's where we need to go because that's what needs healing. I would succeed in the session, and my client would have this big cathartic experience. But then I noticed that shortly after the session they'd have some big dramatic backlash experience. I had clients get into a car wreck right after my session and claimed they couldn't see the car. I had a client spike a big fever. A variety of ways that their protectors were punishing us for having violated the rules by going to these exiles without permission from the protectors. So I learned the hard way to always start with protectors and get permission. We sort of did that, but Allison also had a lot of self, so I felt confident to go to her exile. But yeah, these are delicate inner ecologies in some cases, and we need to be ecologically sensitive as we go in and learn the rules and get permission.

We're exploring that. I've got a couple partners who are fairly prominent organizational type people, and we're trying to figure that out. I do believe it's all parallel. You could look at an organization this way: who are the exiles, who are the managers, who are the firefighters? You can look at a country this way because our country is a massive example of that right now. Where's the self? How can we go into a company and help everybody start to access self and interact from that place rather than from all these parts? Especially the leaders, because self is contagious, and it will trickle down from a leader. But protective parts are also contagious. If your leader is in protectors, it will affect the atmosphere in the company in a big way. So those are all things we're talking about.

Inner saboteurs have a really bad name in the field too. People are taught to fight with them or ignore them or override them, which is a huge mistake. There are parts. Allison had this hook which was desperate to not let her show herself. As she shows herself in this podcast, she's constantly feeling this hook. In those circles, that would be considered an inner saboteur. It turns out it's just a little kid who's terrified of being seen. That's the title of my book: No Bad Parts. I've worked with critics, temper tantrums, homicidal parts that have killed people in prisons, sex offenders. Even those parts, if you open to hear their secret histories, will tell you how they were forced into their roles and the burdens they carry and how they hate what they've done but can't stop themselves. This is a model of total, utter compassion for everything inside of you, and then once you can do that, everything outside of you. It's radical in that way.

The only population I've had trouble accessing it with are people with fairly severe brain damage, because it seems like you have to have a certain amount of hardware to embody it. But for me, self isn't a psychological concept. It's much more of a spiritual essence that can be in us or is also a field around us. How we treat our body and how much we unburden allows more of it to be in us. A lot of my vision is that if we could bring enough self to this planet, things would change very quickly.

When we do the trainings, we teach people to notice when you're in self and when you're not. As I came to do this podcast, I start by checking in: what are my friendly protectors doing right now? I can notice them in different places in my body. I've got parts of stress in my forehead, weight on my shoulders, my heart can be closed. I just notice all those protectors and remind them: remember it always goes better if you trust me, just let me handle this podcast. Then I feel all this opening and release. My heart is open now, I don't have a big agenda about what happens. I feel connected to you partly because you're so gracious. I feel much more open. I'm checking that all the time. There's a kind of vibrating energy that runs through my body when I have a lot of self-energy. I also mentioned that when people are in self, they have these C-word qualities: calm, curious, compassionate, confident, and there are four others: clarity, courage, creativity, and connectedness. Those are the eight C's of self-leadership. I can notice how much of those qualities am I embodying right now. If I'm not, it means there's a part that's blocking, so I ask it to give me some space. That is very teachable to the people you coach.

I don't know for sure, sorry.